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February 15, 2016

1kg quality Pork belly (boned, skin removed and set aside, DO NOT score the skin)

1 tbls Chinese five spice

1 tsp Fennel seeds

½ tsp coriander seeds

1 tbls Honey

2 cloves Garlic

2 sprigs Rosemary

2 tbls extra virgin olive oil

Salt n pepper

½ bottle Dry cider

Rub all ingredients (except the cider) onto the pork belly and marinade overnight.

Place pork belly in a vacuum bag

Set the Venix oven to 70’c, full steam

Place in the oven for 16 hours

For Pork skin

Few sprigs of Rosemary

½ tsp Black mustard seeds

Salt n pepper

Finely chop the rosemary and then sprinkle all ingredients onto the fatty side of the pork skin.

Place the pork skin (skin-side down) on the work bench, roll up the skin really tightly to make a swiss roll type sausage and wrap with cling film, tying off the ends.

Place in the Venix oven with the pork belly to steam at 70’c for 2 hours.

After 2 hours take out of the oven place in the fridge to set

You might be asking why we vacuum pack the pork belly and wrap up the pork skin and then place in the oven to steam. Well, by setting up the oven on steam instead of just convection, we can more accurately control the temperature inside the oven chamber, replicating that of a water bath.

Thanks to Venix’s direct water injection system you can generate high density steam inside the oven chamber which makes the temperature very stable, allowing you to work within a degree, turning your Venix oven into a sous vide machine!

After 16 hours remove the pork belly from the oven

Remove the belly from the vacuum bag, saving any lovely juice that comes with it (careful, the pork belly will be super tender)

Portion the belly into 4 equal pieces and place onto one of a GN 1/1 non-stick grill plates

Now set your Venix oven to 210’c, fan on full, valve fully open & humidity to 0

Place the pork belly and pork skin discs into the oven and roast until the belly has caramelised (it might look a bit dark but trust me this is a good thing), and until the skin discs have turned a beautiful golden colour and gone ultra-crispy, about 7 minutes

Deglaze the grill plate that you cooked the pork belly on with ½ a bottle of quality dry cider (it’s up to you what you do with the other half) and the pork juices, and then emulsify with a large knob of butter, use this as your sauce.

Serve immediately

I’ve served mine with a pear and pomegranate salad, beautiful.

Top tip

I cook my pork overnight, that way I’m freeing up the oven for other dishes throughout the day.